The parish church of San Maurizio Canavese is not the oldest building in town, and it was born of a shift in the centre of gravity. The original nucleus, with the castle and the pieve, lay elsewhere; when in 1335 marchioness Margherita of Savoy granted the community the land to found a new fortified settlement, activity moved there and the old centre began to empty.
What to see
The present church was wanted by the confraternities of Santa Croce and Corpus Domini and by the people, and it is today the seat of the parish of Saint Maurice the martyr. The saint is the commander of the Theban Legion, the one to whom the castle chapel had been dedicated: the dedication followed the people in their move, and it is the thread tying the new town to the old one.
Visiting
The handover was slow. The pieve went on performing parish functions until 1813, but for a long time before that services were increasingly held in the new church: for nearly five centuries the town had two churches and one dedication, with the parish formally on one side and the practice on the other.
Our editors' tip
It is worth seeing both churches on the same day, the parish church in the centre and the pieve outside: they are the same community at two different moments, and the distance between them tells you how far the town moved. It is also the only way to understand why the old centre of San Maurizio is where it is.